The Emory BIRCWH Program will be a multidisciplinary education program designed to provide career development training and support for outstanding early career investigators with a professional interested in innovative and high impact women's health research. The rationale behind the proposed dedicated education and training program includes: 1) the expanding need, particularly in the southeastern US to identify and train next generations of health-scientists invested in women's health research; 2) the growing necessity for high-quality biomedical research aimed at bridging health disparity between the sexes; 3) the importance of fostering interdisciplinary education and training in sex/gender life science; and 4) the unique opportunity to leverage the extensive expertise and the well-developed research infrastructures, particularly in the field of communicable disease at Emory, to address scientific questions pertinent to women's health. Strengths and resources from partner institutions, combined with a critical mass of investigators working in a significant number of health- related disciplines relevant to women's health within Emory, create an ideal training environment for advancing women's health research. The focus of our program on communicable disease and the impact on women's health highlights health disparities -in our case, among racial/ethnic minority women in the southeastern US - thereby aligning the proposed work with the agenda of the NIH office of research on women's health (OWHR) and capitalizing on Emory's strength in communicable diseases and basic immunology while leveraging existing collaborations with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), Morehouse School of Medicine, and Georgia Institute of Technology, all within a few mile radius of Emory. A formal curriculum has been designed featuring didactic training and mentoring by a team of interdisciplinary established senior scholars and practitioners. Training of investigators from minority and underprivileged backgrounds is a particular focus of this program, and will be facilitated by existing strengths and partnerships in Atlanta. The program also will include a rigorous system for tracking and assessing progress. The Emory BIRCWH is an important component of a growing academic enterprise at Emory, and Emory is poised to provide outstanding career development for emerging leaders in women's health research.